The Kundalini Guide: A Companion For the Inward Journey (Companions For the Inward Journey Book 1)

by Bonnie Greenwell

  The spiritual practices in both yogic and Buddhist traditions have a remarkable built-in structure that will ultimately cause the practitioners to release the hidden components of conditioning. In other words, meditation or yoga or visualization can open up all the cells that are storing the memories, and these can erupt to the surface at any time. When kundalini activates this is likely to happen sooner, rather than later, and with an intensity that is shocking. Abuse is stored not only in the cells, but woven into the conditioning, and the memory arises in order to be met, accepted and released from the subtle, physical and mental fields. Remember that the function of kundalini is to make one free, and freedom cannot happen as long as parts of a life are hidden. Consciousness must meet its history in order to free it.

  So in some cases unresolved or suppressed memories of sexual abuse awaken along with the kundalini, as it begins its journey from the lower chakras, and the fear and pain of the abuse is felt concurrently with the kundalini energy. It is difficult to open up further and to experience the true potential of bliss when the body is associating the energy with a long-forgotten trauma. In addition, some yogis say that sexual invasion at an early age can cause a kundalini arousal, and the energy will go through the system in a distorted pattern, instead of following the correct channels, and this can cause hysteria, erratic moods, and difficult to control psychological and energetic responses. Later, if a person does spiritual practices the energy will reactivate quickly, because it is already open, but it may charge through the body without much usefulness, destabilizing the personality instead.

  In my experience with this phenomena, I have found that it is essential for people with sexual abuse issues, and those with severe physical abuse or other traumatic memories, to receive therapy with someone who has expertise in this particular field, in order to deal with the long repressed childhood story, which was probably never told. It is important to be fully revealed, so that the inner child can finally be heard, experience compassion, and be helped to discover his or her own innate innocence and strength. This is like a preparation for the later work that will naturally be done through the spiritual awakening. There is a need to honor our humanness as part of the whole picture of awakening out of it. To do any less is a spiritual bypass, and will put us in a spiritual cul-de-sac, where we cannot go all the way on our journey to Truth and wholeness.

  In the above examples Jackie needed to work through her sexual abuse issues, so that she could restore her sexual freedom with her husband. Her body was telling her the next step in her journey was immediate and personal and about the healing of the separate self. Later she could go more deeply into the spiritual work.

  Lauren’s case is an example of someone who is not ready for meditation practice, and needs to work through early childhood abuse, and perhaps is better served by a more conventional spirituality at this time. She is too open emotionally, physically and energetically and is not capable of coping with the powerful energies available to her without becoming disoriented. There is a time when having a faith in a higher power, and leaning on that, is nurturing and supportive. Until she has done her psychological work, and found her personal strengths, she is not able to hold the energies that are so easily activated in her body as a consequence of her abuse. This is similar to what happened to many young people in the 60’s who had breakdowns as a consequence of drug use. When one misses certain stages of development they are not adequately prepared for the subsequent stage. There are probably exceptions to this perception, but in general this is what I have observed in those who have unusual difficulties with kundalini arisings.

  I do not intend to imply that people who have suffered abuse should not follow spiritual practices. Suffering is a great motivator for entering the spiritual path, as the Buddha observed centuries ago. Many who have suffered develop strong characters and a great capacity for truth. They may have compassion for the plight of others, and a hunger to know their true nature. I am suggesting that the more consciousness one has about their history, and the more they have faced it and come to terms with it, the better prepared they are for the events that will occur during the process of psychological deconstruction. Our bodies can open up to an astonishing bliss and peacefulness once the pain is thoroughly released.

  Beyond Experiences

  You are not your experiences. You, as consciousness, carry an illusory self that believes it is the sum of your experiences, and your reactions to them. The drives, anxieties, sorrows, longings and ambitions that navigate the body/mind through life are energies entangled in the past. They cause you to make the choices you make, and trigger the judgments of self and others that limit your self- expression. Fear is in our physical cells, but it is also an energy derived from many assumptions about our self and others, that is based on our history and experience, and we continually reactivate the cells by exposing them to negative thinking.

  When you are able to slip out of the maze of personal history, and live a moment that is immediate and fresh, here and now, free of any need to protect or project any image of yourself, there is a profound internal relaxation. This is one reason many people love being in the wilderness, where there is no one to interact with and only the beautiful acceptance of nature. They can let down their guards and self-consciousness and may discover who they are without them.

  Whether you are finding yourself engaged in collecting relative experiences in the world of the body/mind, or mystical experiences that come through the opening of the subtle field, you are neither a human nor a mystic. There is no need to avoid or to seek more experience. You are the spaciousness in which they occur. You can use any label you wish to define yourself in language, and you can play any role that attracts you. But the way to avoid fear and suffering is to discover the spaciousness you are and let it view the experiences you have without the overlay of judgment, demand, attachment and resistance. Most fear and suffering is simply an energy produced by thought, flooding our cells and chemistry. Fear is useful if it helps us extract ourselves from a physically dangerous situation. Pain is inevitable at times as long as our vehicle is a physical form. But most of our fear and suffering is inflicted by thought, and amplified by DNA and memory.

  When fear arises in your spiritual life, it will transmute if you will embrace it as an energy that is telling you that you are close to falling into Truth. You might put more attention on asking who you would be without this fear. What is it that notices this energy? Is it an image in the mind, a mere thought, or is it Truth that is stimulating this energy? We do not need to allow the habit of fear to dictate our lives, for if we do, our lives become a mere shadow of their potentiality.

  One of the insights of living in the present moment, instead of the memory of the past or a fantasy of the future, is that you realize that nothing fearful is happening right now. If it were, you would instinctively be responding to it. Fear is often only the energy of the thoughts that you carry in the backpack of your mind. Freedom is seeing this fear as an energy that can easily be dropped by the side of the road. Try to be curious rather than afraid.

  Kundalini awakening brings many challenges, so it can be helpful to know that as a process it has been recognized for hundreds of years in other cultures. Many have walked this same path. The next chapter will reveal how it is understood and valued in eastern traditions and cultures.

  Chapter 5:

  The Secrets of the East

  For hundreds (or possibly thousands) of years spiritual sects in India and China have followed secret practices developed to awaken the inner spirit, and bring alive the slumbering energy of the life force. In both countries, these have evolved into complex systems, available to almost anyone who asks for them, using many specific breathing and visualization exercises. These are supposed to culminate in a deeply transformative experience through which the student realizes the underlying nature that is shared by all life forms.

  Both systems have developed many body/mind practices said to improve flexibility,
health, physical and mental strength, power over the elements and other supernatural gifts. However, there is a great divide between the way traditional Indians and Chinese cultures would define and frame these practices. In India, they are part of an ancient and deeply rooted emotional connection to the play of the Divine, and integrated into the development of a long spiritual journey. In China the emphasis is more on clarity of mind, using the energies of nature for healing and well-being, recognizing that we are empowered by our contacts with the deeper streams of energy to which we have access, but rarely recognize until we are trained.

  Mystics on the Western Path

  Western mysticism is very different from the eastern path, having evolved out of the pre-Christian Judaic traditions, the desert fathers, and the mystery schools of Egypt and Greece, re-framed by the Roman influence on Christianity, and then filtered through the western fascination and reliance on mind that emerged in the Renaissance. Although western mystics describe many of the phenomena that also arise in the eastern mystics, such as visions, enraptured conditions of knowing they are one with God, and insights into the illusory nature of human perception and the oneness of all things, they rarely discuss the physicality of their experiences, other than mentioning pain and suffering.

  With no language or paradigm to understand the subtle energies that accompany their spiritual awakenings, the movement of energy rests beneath the surface of the events they report in their lives. This may account for so many of the reports of ill health among saints and sages in the western lineages, many of whom seemed to experience physical and emotional suffering and even persecution along with the empowerment that accompanied their realizations.

  Non-Dual Traditions

  Another path has evolved from the non-dual traditions of Advaita Vedanta, and two schools of Buddhism: Dzoghen and Zen. Buddha was born into a Hindu Brahman family, and had followed Hindu paths for many years before he sat under the Bodhi tree and became the first Buddhist. He was steeped in the understanding of spiritual process at that time, because he was already an established teacher with followers, so he must certainly have known yoga meditation and energy practices, and found his way into samadhi, the highest state of unity, where consciousness is merged with universal source. If his greatest insights had ended there, Buddhism would not have been needed as a new approach to spiritual awakening, because there was already an ancient and established path. What Buddhism offered was a way to realization through a shift in consciousness and identity, a capacity to drop out of the trance of thought and personal identification, directly into the spacious clarity and awareness of conscious presence with no personal self. It also brought forth a new moderate way to live as an awakened person, and the understanding that awakening was not about acquiring something, but rather the letting go of everything. Both gradual and direct paths of Buddhism evolved as ways to carry this insight.

  In this movement, one could be in an alert state of mental clarity, and yet know there was nothing there but awareness, and realize a wholeness paradoxically empty of substance but ripe with potentiality. This was a remarkable discovery in the days before molecular science and the nature of atoms had been revealed. Ancient Hindu teachings understood this universal Oneness too, as is clear from translations of Vedanta scriptures, but Buddha found a more direct method of realizing it.

  Some time later, a non-dualistic form of Vedanta was revived by a revered teacher named Sankara, and this offered a direct path through transmission or study with a teacher, somewhat similar in perspective to Buddhism, although followers tended to describe the ultimate experience as a knowledge of Self, while Buddha called it no-self. This approach became known as Self-inquiry after the awakening and teaching of the Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi.

  Over time Buddhism moved into other countries, merging and adapting with prevailing cultural styles in places like Tibet, China, Indonesia, Japan and the United States, and so it now has a variety of forms. Most of them have little reference to kundalini energy, although it is recognized that energy changes happen along with spiritual awakening. These are considered a by-product, and in most systems little attention is given to them, the exception being Tibetan Buddhism, which was melded into Tibetan shamanism in its earliest years, and includes practices for working with subtle body energy, as well as states of calm abiding, and clear mind.

  Kundalini Science

  In India the study of kundalini energy developed centuries ago, and is a significant part of the yogic and tantric traditions. Because it was studied thoroughly, there are classical texts describing how it moves and affects the human body, mind and spiritual development. India is a vast country and there have been numerous variations over the centuries, so there is little consistency in the practices and methods offered by kundalini masters, tantric practitioners, or numerous other schools of yoga. But it is useful to note the general model that describes how and why kundalini energy moves as it does, because few westerners have an understanding of it, despite the fact they engage in many practices that can awaken it. So this discussion of the science of kundalini is not meant to be a final word, or the only word, on the topic, but may offer some direction for people caught in the experience.

  Although there are some correlations with the framework used for Chinese acupuncture, QiGong and Tai Chi, because they also address the subtle body, the elements, and the streams of energy in the body, it is beyond the scope of this book and its author to describe the Chinese system.

  Kundalini Science describes humans as existing within three bodies: the physical or gross body, the subtle or energy body, and the causal body. The physical body consists of all that is material, the molecular structures we appear to be, with skin, bones, organs, blood, etc. The subtle or energy body is said to be a network of 72,000 invisible lines of energy called nadis, arranged with numerous chakras which interlace it into the physical form. The tradition identifies 36 primary nadis and 7 major chakras, and these are of the most interest for someone doing yoga practices, although I have been told by a yogi master there are actually 50 chakras throughout the body, primarily located in the legs. Tantra also describes a number of esoteric chakras extending above the head, which are beyond the scope of my research.

  Within the subtle body are 3 finer elemental bodies carrying emotions, thought and senses, and all of our internal activities flow through these bodies. Prana is the term for the energy as it goes through us, and it is fueled by breath. Prana is differentiated into five kinds, said to be responsible for all movements, voluntary and involuntary, such as sneezing, coughing, the circulation of the heart, elimination, sexual action, movement, blinking, etc. Each of the five pranas has a certain directional flow, up or down or circular. Breathing and concentration practices in yoga are used to expand prana, or manipulate it in specific ways to strengthen the body, and facilitate the activation of kundalini.

  When kundalini awakens at the base of the spine some yogis say there are six possible energy channels through which it will arise, all within or around the spine. Sometimes awakened energy moves through channels that cannot go all the way to the crown of the head but stops at lower chakras. Optimally the energy moves into a space variously identified either as above or at the crown of the head called sahasrara, (sometimes identified as the 7th chakra), a movement understood as essential for realization. If kundalini is caught in one of the lower channels lots of sexual energy can be stirred up. Ideally (but very rarely), the kundalini moves quickly and directly upward through chitrini channel. More commonly, it rises through sushumna, the central channel within the spine, where it winds upward in stages and can take a very long time to complete. If it is in the wrong channel, kundalini needs to be re-routed into sushumna to have a complete fulfillment of its potential. This is accomplished by bringing attention to the base and doing a breathing and concentration practice that focuses on the central channel. The need to recognize errors and route kundalini correctly is one of the reasons that proper guidance from an awakened teac
her is emphasized in the tradition.

  Sometimes when kundalini first activates in sushumna a person may see or feel a streaming of light, smell pleasant or unpleasant odors, or have a sensation of being empty and made of air. There can be many unusual experiences, fearful or pleasant visions, mood shifts and other non-ordinary experiences.

  A full arising and completion of this process is considered by yogis to be exceedingly rare. Instead, kundalini energy usually stabilizes in one of the chakras, or bounces up and down through two or more of them. These partial arisings can vary greatly in intensity and produce various phenomena depending on personal tendencies, toxins in the energy or physical bodies, spiritual intention and practices, and general psychological and physical health. Until kundalini has risen and stabilized above the heart chakra, the mind and emotions can be very unstable and erratic.

  There are six chakras along the spine and up to a point between the eyebrows (ajna chakra). Kundalini can become blocked at any of them, causing specific difficulties and distractions. A few yogis offer specific advanced practices to re-route and break through these blocks, but generally their advice is only accessible to students they are very familiar with, as the practices can be a risk to both physical and mental health when attempted at the wrong stage of the process, or if the body/mind is not sufficiently prepared. Some systems of Kundalini Tantra use sound to open blockages. One set of sounds that help are called the Bij mantras, tones to resonate with each chakra. These can be found on the internet. Yoga asanas (physical positions) and breathing practices can also be helpful, especially alternate nostril breathing, which balances energy unilaterally.